Silence of the Bones: A Murder Force Crime Thriller

by Adam J. Wright

  Her face darkened and she looked at the Lego-strewn carpet, her eyes drawn to one of the lifeless dolls.

  Tony could see she was drifting into a memory.

  “What was the weather like that day?” he asked gently.

  “Miserable,” she said, still looking at the doll. “Like I said, the river had broken its banks. There’d been a lot of rain. It was muddy, and there was a light drizzle. A fine mist hanging in the air.”

  “But that didn’t put you or Mary off. You went playing by the river, anyway.”

  She nodded slowly. “We weren’t afraid of rain, or mud, or anything, really.” Her eyes drifted from the doll up to Tony. “Perhaps we should have been.”

  She was getting into abstracts. Tony needed to keep her attention fixed on the details of that day. “What time was this? Morning? Afternoon? Evening?”

  “Evening. It was getting dark. We weren’t bothered, though. We didn’t have a care in the world. We were throwing sticks into the river and chatting about anything and everything. Mary fancied a boy called Peter Trent at school. She was going on about him, mostly.”

  “Sounds like you were enjoying yourselves,” Tony said. “What happened next?”

  Colleen closed her eyes for a couple of seconds, trying to remember. “There was a car. It came over the bridge. The headlights were on, and they lit up the bank where we were standing.”

  “Do you know what type of car it was?”

  “A black Land Rover.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She looked at him sharply. “I was twelve, not two. I know what a Land Rover looks like.”

  She was losing focus, and that was his fault for questioning her. He had to get her back on track. “I mean are you sure it was black? Go back to that evening. See the car in your mind.”

  “It was black,” she said firmly.

  “What else do you remember about the car?”

  “Nothing much. The headlights were so bright, it was hard to see anything.”

  “So how do you know the car was—“ Dani began, but Tony placed a hand on her arm, silencing her. Colleen was in a receptive state at the moment, and adversarial questions would only bring her out of it. She wasn’t hypnotised or anything like that, but Tony could tell by her eyes and her breathing that she’d be a good candidate for hypnosis.

  “What happened next?” he asked Colleen softly.

  “The door opened, and someone got out.”

  Tony, whose hand was still on Dani’s arm, felt the DI’s muscles tighten beneath her jumper. This was the crux of the matter. The man who had climbed out of that black Land Rover twenty-two years ago could be the man who abducted Daisy Riddle seven years later, along with what might turn out to be countless other girls.

  Colleen might have seen his face.

  “What did he look like?” he asked, trying to make the question sound casual.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. He was silhouetted against the lights. They were so bright.”

  “Was he tall or short?”

  Colleen shrugged. “I don’t know. Average.”

  “Did he walk with a limp, or stooped over? Or did he—“

  “He was just there, in front of the headlights. Standing there, watching us.”

  “All right. What happened next?”

  “I was scared. I pulled on Mary’s arm, tried to tell her it was time to go home. She wasn’t having any of it. She shook me off and said everything was all right, that she knew him, and he was her friend. I told her she was a liar. I didn’t believe she knew him at all. I couldn’t see who he was because of the lights, but I could tell he was an adult. Mary was fourteen. She didn’t have any grown up friends, at least not as far as I knew.”

  Tony glanced at Dani, and she looked at him, nodding slightly. If Mary Harwood had known the man who’d abducted her, it was an avenue worth investigating.

  “Mary went to the car,” Colleen continued. “She told me that everything was all right, but I was still scared. I told her not to go. I was so frightened, I started to cry. She told me I was a baby. She kept walking towards the Land Rover, where he was waiting, framed by the headlights.”

  Her eyes dropped to the carpet once more, and Tony saw tears forming in them. “She was nothing more than a silhouette as she got closer to the car. Then they both got in, and I never saw my sister again.”

  “What did you do?” Dani asked.

  “It was completely dark once the Land Rover had driven away. I ran home. On the way, I slipped in the mud and fell into the river. I managed to pull myself out, but by the time I got home, I was soaking wet and covered in mud. I told my mum and dad what had happened, and they called the police. A couple of policemen coming to the farm. They asked me some questions and I told them what I just told you. But they didn’t believe me.”

  “Why not?” Tony asked. He’d had no reason to believe Colleen had been anything but totally honest while telling her story, so why had the police felt differently twenty-two years ago?

  “While they were interviewing me, two of their colleagues went to the place where I told them it had happened and searched along the riverbank. They found the place where I’d slipped in and decided that it was Mary who’d fallen into the river, and that I’d tried to go in and save her—which was why I was soaking wet, apparently—but had failed to stop her from drowning and had made up the story about the Land Rover on my way home.”

  Tony frowned. “Why would they think that?”

  “I don’t know. Even my mum kept telling me to tell the truth, as if she thought I was lying. And then, a couple of days later, they found Mary’s coat, and one of her shoes a bit further downriver. That convinced them they were right. Everybody—including my own parents—thought I was a liar.”

  “So, they didn’t investigate the Land Rover angle at all?” Dani asked.

  Colleen shook her head. “Not after they found Mary’s clothes. They were sure she’d drowned. They sent frogmen down to look for her body, but they never found anything.”

  She wiped her eyes. “When that girl was found in those ruins, I thought it could be Mary, but then the News said it was Daisy Riddle. Now this other body has been found, and I’m wondering again if it’s my sister.”

  “It isn’t certain that she’s dead,” Tony said. “She might have gone off with the guy in the Land Rover, run away from home.”

  “No, she’d never do that. I knew my sister. She wouldn’t run away with some old bloke. And how did her coat and shoe end up in the river, if that was the case?”

  “She might have been covering her tracks. Making sure no one looked for her.”

  “He was covering his tracks, more like. Making sure no one came looking for him.”

  Tony had to admit that she had a point. The coat and shoe could have been tossed into the river by the killer at a later date, to make the abduction look like a drowning.

  “I’ve not been much help, have I?” Colleen asked, looking from Tony to Dani. “I can’t remember what he looked like, and it was so long ago now, that there won’t be any evidence to support my story.” She grimaced. “I’ve even questioned myself sometimes. Maybe I did make the whole thing up.”

  “You’ve been a great help,” Dani said. “Going back to the fact that Mary said she knew the man in the Land Rover, are you sure there wasn’t an adult she knew back then? Someone who was hanging around, perhaps?”

  “No, there’s nobody. I’ve been racking my brain for twenty-two years about who it could have been, but there really wasn’t anyone. Not anyone Mary told me about, anyway.”

  “Was she a secretive person?” Tony asked.

  “Not as far as I know, but there were two years between us. She might have kept something from me if she thought I was too young to understand.”

  “Like boyfriends?”

  “I don’t think so. She wouldn’t shut up about Peter Trent, but he was just someone she fancied, you know? Perhaps there was someone else. Someone older.” She
thought about it, and then shook her head. “No, I don’t believe it. Mary wouldn’t have been so stupid.”

  Despite Colleen’s fierce loyalty to her sister, Tony wasn’t so sure that Mary hadn’t somehow become involved with the man who had caused her disappearance. It was an angle that would have to be looked into.

  “How can we contact your parents?” Dani asked Colleen, obviously thinking the same thing.

  “My mum’s still at the farm. Well, she’s in the house, anyway. Most of the land’s been sold off now. But mum would never leave the house.”

  “And your dad?” Tony asked.

  “He died when I was fifteen. Heart attack. With Mary disappearing and then dad dying, Mum went a bit downhill. I still see her every week, take her shopping and things like that. But she’s not the same person she used to be. I’ve tried to get her to sell that big house and move to one of those sheltered housing projects, but she won’t do it. Says the place has got too many memories for her to leave it behind.”

  Dani positioned the pencil over the notebook. “Have you got a phone number for her?”

  “Yes, hang on.” Colleen reached over and picked up her mobile from a side table, scrolling through her contacts before reading off a number. “That’s the landline at the farm. Mum hasn’t got a mobile.”

  “Thanks.” Dani put the notebook away. “I think we’ve got everything we need. We’ll be in touch if we have any news.” She stood up, and Tony followed suit.

  “If it is Mary’s body you’ve found,” Colleen said, getting up as well, “you’ll let me know, right? I mean, before I hear it on the News.”

  “Of course,” Tony said. “We always try to inform next of kin before we release any names.”

  “But next of kin will probably be your mother,” Dani said.

  Colleen looked worried. “No, please, you have to tell me. She still thinks Mary drowned. It’ll be a shock to her if she finds out that isn’t the case. Let me break the news to her.”

  “Colleen,” Dani said. “The body we found might not even be Mary.”

  “I know that.” She led them to the front door. “But with all these girls turning up from years ago, Mary might be among them, you know?”

  “Do you hope she is?” Tony asked, professional curiosity getting the better of him.

  Without any hesitation, Colleen nodded and said, “Yes, I do. I don’t like the idea that someone snuffed out her life, or that she might have gone through…an ordeal…before she died. But at least we’d finally know where she was, and we’d be able to bury her properly.”

  It was the kind of answer Tony had been expecting, the kind of thing he’d heard countless times in his job. Knowing what had happened to a loved one—even if that knowledge brought with it more questions—was better than not knowing. “Of course,” he said with a slight nod and a tight-lipped smile. “I understand completely.”

  “We’ll be in touch,” Dani said, opening the door and stepping out onto the front step.

  Tony followed her out and together, they walked quickly to the car to avoid getting too wet in the rain.

  “What do you think?” Dani asked when the car doors were closed, and she’d started the engine.

  “I think the police should have believed her story twenty-two years ago.”

  “I’m inclined to agree with you.”

  Tony looked back at the house they had just come from. Colleen was standing in the open doorway, joined now by her son, Lucas, who was holding his mother’s hand. In his other hand, he held one of the dolls from the living room floor.

  Tony gave the lad a wave. Lucas waved back with the hand holding the doll.

  As they drove away, Dani tossed her notebook onto Tony’s lap. “Give the mother a ring,” she said. “We’re going to have a word with her.”

  Chapter 13

  Tony and Dani found Harwood Farm nestled against the hills Northwest of Bakewell. On the phone, Tony had managed to reach Mrs Harwood and had told her who he was and that he’d been speaking to her daughter. When he’d mentioned that he and DI Summers would like to speak to her, she’d sounded timid, almost scared, but she’d agreed.

  Tony wondered if, somewhere deep inside, Mrs Harwood suspected that the story her daughter told her on a rainy night twenty-two years ago might be true. She must have heard about the discovery of the bodies on the News, and now, a police detective and a psychologist from Murder Force were coming to visit her.

  She must have put two and two together, even if only subconsciously.

  “She probably thinks we’re coming to tell her we’ve found her daughter,” he said to Dani, whose attention was focused on the track that led to the farmhouse.

  “Well, we’re not, and we can’t even hint that the body at the well might be Mary. There’s no point upsetting the poor woman. Mary Harwood will be a good place to start for the comparison of dental records, but I’m sure Battle has already thought of that. I’d say he’s already called the odontologist to do a comparison.”

  “So, we’re here because…” Tony said, letting his words fade away. After hearing Mrs Harwood’s timid voice on the phone, he wondered if they were being premature questioning her right now.

  “Because Mary said she knew the man who drove her away in that Land Rover. Her mother might be able to shed some light on that.”

  “Don’t you think that if Mary knew an older man, she’d have kept it from her parents? I doubt Mrs Harwood knows anything about it.”

  Dani shrugged. “Then we’ll find that out when we speak to her.”

  Tony didn’t reply. He wondered if the DI was taking the bull by the horns because she wanted to take a more active role in this case than she’d been assigned.

  Noticing his silence, she said, “Look, the man we’re looking for has taken at least three girls: Daisy Riddle; the girl at the well; and whoever that ankle bone belongs to. It isn’t a stretch to think he could be the guy Colleen saw in the Land Rover that night.”

  Tony had to agree there was a good chance that the man who’d driven off with Mary was the same man who later abducted Daisy, and an unknown number of other girls. He just wasn’t sure that Mary’s mother would provide them with anything useful, and interviewing her on the off chance of gleaning a useful nugget of information had to be weighed against the fact that they would be dredging up painful memories.

  At least the rain had stopped. Looming storm clouds coloured the sky dark grey, but their edges were illuminated by the sun as it tried to cut through them.

  Dani parked the Land Rover in the front yard of the farmhouse—a gravelled area surrounded by outbuildings—and got out. Tony followed, looking around as Dani knocked on the door.

  The farm was remote, surrounded by wide expanses of fields framed by low hills. A line of trees in the distance snaked through the landscape. The trees probably grew by the river where Mary and Colleen had been playing over two decades ago.

  The door opened, and a slight woman in her late fifties peered out from within the house. She wore large glasses that looked decades out of date, and an oversized grey jumper with blue jeans. Her hair was fixed into a ponytail with a rubber band.

  As Dani introduced herself and showed the woman her warrant card, Tony realised how much looking at Mrs Harwood was like looking at an older version of Colleen. An older, more stooped version, anyway. The woman seemed to have all the cares of the world on her shoulders.

  “Mrs, Harwood, I’m Tony Sheridan,” he said, showing his identity card and an accompanying smile that he hoped looked friendly.

  “Come in, both of you,” she said, shuffling into the house like someone twice her age. “And call me June. Now, who wants a cup of tea?”

  Dani declined, but Tony said, “That would be lovely, June. Thanks.”

  “Colleen rang me when you left her house,” June said, going into the rustic, farmhouse kitchen and filling up the kettle. “Said she gave you my number. She also said you don’t know who that girl is that was found today. I’ll t
ell you now, it’s not my Mary. Colleen might have some fanciful notions in her head, but my daughter drowned in a river more than twenty years ago.”

  “That may be the case,” Tony said. “We’ve just come here to talk to you about Mary.”

  She took two mugs from cupboard and set them on the counter. “Because Colleen has been filling your head with stories, and you think that girl you found today might be her.”

  “Not necessarily. We’re just covering all angles.

  “Well, you’d make better use of your time looking for the person who murdered those poor girls, instead of delving into the past. Mary died by accident. It was tragic, and heart-breaking, but it was an accident. Nobody did anything to her.”

  Tony simply nodded. During his time as a clinical psychologist, he’d seen many people trying to convince themselves of something, to squash a nagging doubt in the back of their minds. He was seeing that now in June Harwood. On the one hand, she was telling them they were wasting their time here, that her daughter’s death had no bearing on the current case, yet on the other, she hadn’t turned them away, or refused to speak to them.

  On the contrary, she was inviting them in and making tea. Tony was sure that even though June outwardly dismissed Colleen’s story, a part of her—perhaps hidden deep inside her subconscious—wondered if it was true. If a man really had driven Mary away in a black Land Rover all those years ago.

  And no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t completely ignore that niggling voice, because like any mother, she had an overwhelming desire to know the truth about what had happened to her daughter.

  The rejection of Colleen’s story, and the assertion that Mary had drowned in the river, was a psychological shield, protecting her from having to face the possibility that someone had hurt her daughter.

  The fact that she was talking to them at all meant there was a crack in that shield.